They are two sides of the same coin. Each is useful on its own. Together they are transformative.
Jobs To Be Done tells us what progress the customer is seeking and why they decide to change. It gives us the human context: the frustrations, the aspirations, the Switch Moment. It lets us frame the value proposition from the customer's perspective, not the product's.
Without JTBD, you can measure outcomes, but without understanding why that job matters, you won't know how to communicate it or design the surrounding experience.
Outcome-Driven Innovation tells us what to improve first. It converts the job into a prioritised list of outcomes with objective scores. It gives us quantitative rigour: knowing that outcome X scores 14.2 and Y scores 11.8 eliminates roadmap politics.
Without ODI, JTBD can remain interesting philosophy without operational translation. ODI lands the framework into concrete product decisions.
Every innovation opportunity starts with friction. Bob Moesta calls it the struggle: the moment the status quo becomes intolerable and the customer starts looking for alternatives. Without real struggle, there is no energy to change.
The struggle isn't always an explicit complaint. Often it's silent: the customer doesn't complain — they simply invent a parallel solution. That's where workarounds appear — makeshift patches that point exactly to where the gap is.
The key question before any user interview: «What is the customer doing around your product that your product should be doing for them?»
The customer uses your software but keeps an extra spreadsheet to 'keep things clear'. Signal: insufficient reporting or visibility.
Every week they repeat steps the system should automate. Signal: a real automation gap.
They connect your tool to others via Zapier or custom scripts. Signal: native integrations don't cover their real workflow.
A six-phase process from deep customer understanding to a prioritised innovation roadmap.
What job do customers hire your product for? We formulate the job statement (situation, motivation, outcome) and validate it through switch interviews.
JTBDI identify Push (current frustrations), Pull (new promise), Anxieties and Habits. This gives us the emotional map for communication and sales.
JTBD (Moesta)We decompose the job into its 8 phases (Define, Locate, Prepare, Confirm, Execute, Monitor, Modify, Conclude) to find outcomes at each stage.
ODI (Ulwick)We generate the exhaustive list of outcomes in Ulwick format: "Minimise/Maximise [metric] of [object] when [context]." Typically 50–150 outcomes per job.
ODI (Ulwick)I survey real customers measuring importance and current satisfaction for each outcome. I calculate ODI scores and build the opportunity matrix.
ODI (Ulwick)With scores in hand, we define what features to build, which to eliminate (overserved market) and how to communicate the value proposition for the core job.
JTBD + ODIBob Moesta designed the timeline interview to chronologically reconstruct the customer's journey from the first moment of doubt to the moment of purchase. It doesn't ask 'why did you buy?'. It reconstructs the story to understand what forces were acting at each moment.
When was the first time you thought you might need something different? This reveals the beginning of the struggle and the spark that started the search.
The customer starts paying attention to alternatives without active commitment. They see ads, read articles, hear from colleagues. Open but not urgent. This phase can last months.
A trigger event creates urgency. The customer deliberately compares options: demos, trials, sales conversations. The trigger separating this phase from the previous one is gold for sales and marketing.
What information was decisive? What anxieties remained unresolved? What tipped the scales? Here the real purchase criteria are revealed — not the declared ones.
The difference between Little Hire (buying) and Big Hire (actually using). Did the customer integrate the product into their workflow? Was the job truly resolved? This is where the entire value proposition is validated or invalidated.
"Don't ask why they bought. Ask when was the first time they thought they needed something different. That's where the real story begins."
Bob Moesta — Demand-Side Sales 101
Companies accumulate features defensively: out of fear of losing customers or responding to isolated requests. The result is a product that does many things but no customer uses all of it.
ODI gives us permission to simplify. When you see that 60% of your roadmap corresponds to outcomes scoring under 8, the decision not to build them stops being subjective.
Companies sell the whole sandwich (the full value proposition), but the customer only wants the mayonnaise (the progress they need right now). JTBD identifies exactly which part of the sandwich is each segment's mayonnaise.
Result: sharper value propositions, shorter sales cycles and lower abandonment in onboarding.
The next winner in an overserved market is rarely the most complete product. It's the most convenient. Disruption comes from simpler products that resolve the 3–4 most important outcomes better.
Identifying those 3–4 outcomes with ODI and focusing on them is the right strategy for startups attacking established markets.
"There is a fundamental asymmetry: customers cannot articulate what they want, but they can tell you exactly how they measure success. JTBD helps you listen to the latter, and ODI helps you quantify it."
— Toni Guitart Ventura, Venturae
Imagine a project management SaaS for engineering teams. The product team has been debating for months whether to add more integrations or improve the notification system.
With JTBD: We discover the core job is "keeping the whole team aligned on priorities without status meetings". The Switch Moment is usually "after a project that failed due to misalignment".
With ODI: Surveying 80 customers, the most critical outcomes are "minimise the time to know where each team member is blocked" (ODI: 16.4) and "maximise visibility of each task's impact on the overall goal" (ODI: 15.1).
Decision: Neither more integrations nor a better notification system. The Q3 roadmap focuses on a real-time blockers dashboard and visualisation of goal dependencies. That's what customers measure.